What is the point of heavy weapons anymore?

[Voodoo]

Please explain it to me, they were fine on arch militant but that got nerfed into ground.

Reckless rush is min 1 ap and adds 3 stacks, worth early on really pointless once wildfire goes down to 1ap

Wildfire is now min 1ap, no longer count as different attack.

Heavy gunner redcues cost of attack with heavy weapon to minimum 1 ap, even with wildfire and heroic act which supposed to give you 0 ap attacks.

So now with 5 ap you have to rotate single shot with burst to actually get stacks.
so
1 burst(if heroic)
1 single shot
1 reckless rush
1 wildfire
1 rapid fire
1 burst
1 controlled burst(if you dont have talent and arent standing near ally)
thats 7 ap

does it at least do more damage? kinda? if you get all 3 talents for it and stack enough crit chance it might inch over normal

previously you had flat number, even at 100 bs +5 dmg wasnt that impressive on precise bolter but on heavy bolter with low base damage it was significant boost, now with percantage boost it will maybe add 2 dmg at 200 bs. which will be around 40-50 stacks of versatility now.

So whats the point of investing to have 35 str and 3 talents to get weapon which simply will be worse than light variant?

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by Press:

No one cares. The game was too easy. It's a good nerf. Cope.

Have your opinions on arch militant, i dont care.

I ask specifically, why invest in heavy weapons, they are actually weaker than light weapons in same categories even when specifically building for it.

[Imahero]

Been a minute since I played, and I didn't really test heavy weapons on the newest patch. But don't they still have a much higher fire rate than standard weapons (or in the case of malta do more damage)?

I think they're trying to balance it so that they cost more to use but do more damage when used.

[DeathStroke]

they just dont seem to be an efficient choice once you factor in the requirements to use them , maybe if there were a few more high level unique ones to find

[Pierogolepca]

They look a lot cooler :^)

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by Imahero:

Been a minute since I played, and I didn't really test heavy weapons on the newest patch. But don't they still have a much higher fire rate than standard weapons (or in the case of malta do more damage)?

I think they're trying to balance it so that they cost more to use but do more damage when used.

Heavy bolter 6-9 dmg, arpen 20%, rof 8, recoil 40, ap single 2, burst 3
precise bolter 15-21, arpen 15% rof 4. recoil 25, +10% to hit, ap single 1, burst 2
these 2 weapons are available from vendors in act 2 around same pf.

infact in chapter 2 you can get
civitas pattern autogun 5-8 dmg, arpen 5%, rof 7, recoil 15, ap single 1, burst 2.
mezoa pattern autopistol 6-10 dmg, arpen 5%, rof 6, recoil 15, ap single 1, burst 2,

they do, dmg just doesnt justify it, especially with tactical backpack which adds +1 to rof., every other rof increase is % based so it doesnt matter.

previously when arch militant added flat damage bonus and -1 ap + free attacks it was great, now its just bad even with +1 dmg, +10% dmg and ignore 1 deflection talent specific to heavy weapons.

Heavy flamer does a bit better since the only better flamer in act 2 is infernical which doesnt have cone, but thats also the only heavy flamer in game.

[Dewguru]

Originally posted by Press:

No one cares. The game was too easy. It's a good nerf. Cope.

People care, nerfs suck, you should try coping.

[Gengisgame]

Is it not more of an issue that they where only viable with one archetype, perhaps some of the other changes benefit them.

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by Gengisgame:

Is it not more of an issue that they where only viable with one archetype, perhaps some of the other changes benefit them.

to a degree, theres really only 1 archetype which benefits burst weapons and 1 which benefits melee to begin with, but honestly ill take 1 over 0.
Hell theres only 1 companion who can effectively dual wield and theyre by default officer.

As far as changes go i havent seen a single change that would improve them.

[rubyismycat]

Originally posted by Press:

No one cares. The game was too easy. It's a good nerf. Cope.

Another zero steam level private profile ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gets reported for flaming and placed on my block list

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Imagine if they just followed the rules for the TTRPG, they wouldn't need to re-balance anything because the weapons in the system were already balanced.

[sintri]

Never really used them even before the nerf, always seemed bit too ap and cost heavy when you could easily get single shot weapons to do the same damage.

Originally posted by The Seraph of Tomorrow:

Imagine if they just followed the rules for the TTRPG, they wouldn't need to re-balance anything because the weapons in the system were already balanced.

I mean if the game played like a ttrpg, alot of people wouldn't be playing it since tabletop and card games are simplified down alot so the players won't have to calculate and keep track of stats and tickers and ridiculous amounts of additive/multiplicative buffs and debuffs.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Originally posted by sintri:

Never really used them even before the nerf, always seemed bit too ap and cost heavy when you could easily get single shot weapons to do the same damage.

For the most part at launch you could run heavy weapons for an arch if you found ways to reduce the AP cost through talents that made shooting free for a burst. Though for the most part you would use single shot attacks.

Originally posted by sintri:

I mean if the game played like a ttrpg, alot of people wouldn't be playing it since tabletop and card games are simplified down alot so the players won't have to calculate and keep track of stats and tickers and ridiculous amounts of additive/multiplicative buffs and debuffs.

Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not with the above, but in my experience Owlcat makes a habit of building their games in a way that is overly complicated and mechanics heavy just for the sake of being complex systems. It hurts them more than it helps, as it serves a very small niche of players that prefer 3.5e DnD style systems. Rather than trying to mirror systems that try to be the best of both worlds with both versatility (many options) and simplicity.

It's just weir that a player should have to do algebra to figure out what an ability does, when it doesn't need to be complex math to work. Owlcat reinvents the wheel instead of trying to improve upon it.

[sintri]

Originally posted by The Seraph of Tomorrow:

Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not with the above,

Nope, I love overcomplicated ♥♥♥♥, though there also inlies the problem. If one wasn't aware of how modifiers stacked or what their options were, they'll be severely underpowered compared to people who do and thus end up with a wide range where some people say it's too hard and people saying the opposite. Increase the sheer number of these mechanisms and then you'll also end up with instances which they never thought about interacting with each other or never tested.

Which isn't to say that's a bad thing, since on the opposite end of it you have a perfectly balanced system where everything ends up just being a clone of another with a different animation and what'd be the point of choosing something if literally anything else is just as good. Ultimately you should just have a baseline, and give players options if they decide the game is too easy or hard.

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by The Seraph of Tomorrow:

Imagine if they just followed the rules for the TTRPG, they wouldn't need to re-balance anything because the weapons in the system were already balanced.

Yes and no, ttrpg had their own winners, looking at you 5d10+10 pen 10 lascannon or 3d10+8 pen 6 autocannon.
Also combat at high level was hit or miss, literally, either you hit and somebody dies or miss/dodge.

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by sintri:

Never really used them even before the nerf, always seemed bit too ap and cost heavy when you could easily get single shot weapons to do the same damage.

You ran soldier/arch militant, 35 str, max bs, fired up, 3 heavy weapon talents.

Arch militant added BSB/2 extra dmg and added +5 BS per stack of versatility so low dmg high rof weapons benefited more.
Normally heavy weapons cost 1 more ap than light ones, but there was arch militant talent heavy gunner which reduces those costs by 1.
Further you ran wildfire, which allowed for 2nd attack and this attack counted as different type for versatility stacks., but costed 3 ap to activate, reduced by 1 for every 4 stacks of versatility(3 with additional talent).
Reckless rush costed 1ap(0ap with talent), which doubled the amount of versaility stacks you had for a turn.
Heroic act made it so you got 1 free attack every turn.
Finally talent which made you start combat with 2 stacks of versatility

So you started combat popped soldier buffs, first a burst to get to 3 stacks, , then reckless rush to bump that to 6, then wildifre and 2nd burst, if you managed to get heroic by then pop that 3rd attack and if you feel fancy run and gun for 4th.

What changed?
versatility now adds 3 per stack instead of 5, and its +(10+BSB)% dmg instead of flat, meaning higher damage weapons are now prefered because of how deflection works.

There were a couple more but i wont write entire 30 lvls build.

wildfire is capped at 1 ap minimum instead of 0.

reckless rush got 0 ap talent removed and instead of doubling adds +3(welcome to ability which for 1 ap doesnt even add 1% dmg)

but what hurts heavy weapons, heavy gunner is still -1 ap to min of 1, but even if another ability would reduce cost to 0, it remains 1.
So bolter gets normal 2 ap burst, wildifre 0 ap burst, heroic act 0 ap burst, while heavy bolter have 2/1/1 to do the same.
This is not the case with other talents like rapid reload gives -2 ap to reload minimum of 1 ap and theres a ring which reduces reload by -1 ap to minimum of 0 these both stack giving you free reloads.

These nerfs also exist in the world where master tactician gains 20% of all momentum of entire party as tactical advantage,starts combat with extra amount equal to number enemies, gains +1 to every hit they score, acts as if every ability used felb more stacks.
Now abilities for 1/4th of the stacks can get 1/5th of the stacks as resolve, use another ability to get resolve stacks back and add reset cooldown on previous ability, then for every remaining stack gains +4% dmg buff, resulting in easy 200%+ dmg buff on turn 1, with my personal experience being by 4000% dmg buff by turn 3 as literally every attack maxes out heroic act gauge becaue i have over 200 resolve.
Completely untouched.